Black Friday madness: not just for Yanks anymore

With Black Friday here, American retailers are reinforcing their doors and trying to keep fatalities to a minimum. And because it looks like so much fun to run through a store like it’s a refugee camp in 28 Days Later, Canadian shoppers are apparently getting in on the action. Yankee shops near the border have been playing their Black Friday siren songs to Canadians for weeks, while some local retailers are offering discounts designed to keep consumers hereabouts.

According to the Toronto Star:

Wal-Mart electronics deals went on sale at 5 a.m. but shoppers had to get tickets the night before. By midnight, the tickets for the 32-inch Emerson televisions were gone.

Barrera Arturo and Arlenne Del Rincon, of Oakville, spent the night in the baby section of Wal-Mart [in Buffalo], clutching two tickets for the $198 televisions that normally retail for $328.

“It’s my first time sleeping at Wal-Mart,” Del Rincon said.

The Oakville couple spent an uncomfortable night using towels and houseware items for pillows and admitted they were “lost in time,” thinking it was still Thursday.

The Globe and Mail adds that in some parts of Canada, retailers are trying to keep shoppers home, but that probably only works in places that are more than an hour away from Buffalo. The only real way to compete, we’d wager, is to convert entirely and move Boxing Day to Black Friday. Just keep it Canadian, please: polite, with a minimum of trampling.

• Black Friday: ‘I’m on my way, there’s a brawl in jewellery’ [Toronto Star]
• Will Black Friday become a Canadian tradition? [Globe and Mail]